Oldschool wrote:It may be a bit early for this thread, however.Here's hoping that the Pope and his organisers get the warm welcome they deserve.

Why do they deserve a warm welcome?

No idea why you'd give him a warm welcome. Babies buried in septic tanks, vulnerable members of society shunned, Madeline Laundry's, selling orphans overseas. I'm surprised they have the brass neck to be stepping foot off a plane on this island.

Top of the Popes, he be straight in at 3 or maybe 4. Behind JP2, of course, he had a million in the Pheeno back in 79. That's 3 Seasons of ticket sales for Leinster! Pope Alexander VI (a Borgia) was ahead of his time IMHO. Benedict? From Hitler Youth FC, all the way to the top job at the Vatican, what a movie that would be.

Q. Do our Leinster season tickets give us any preferential treatment during the vist of his Holiness?

You know I'm going to lose,And gambling's for fools,But that's the way I like it baby, I don't want to live FOREVER!

Our State yet again took the opportunity to ignore / deny / obfiscate the role that Government Departments of Education, Justice, Foreign Affairs and Health played in collaborating with the power and secrecy of the church bodies in Ireland in keeping a proportion of our population under extraordinary conditions of Industrial Schools. Mother & Baby Homes, Magdalene Laundres and informal and illegal processes of Adoption and baby 'sales'.

The State was aware, informally, of all these scandals but it suited the agenda of those who governed our country that the burden / duty / abuse of those who didn't fit the narrative of a compliant populace be suppressed. This included the majority who had suffered social or church abuse by being raped, or becoming pregnant by the abuse of position or physical coercion.

In many of the institutional settings referred to, it merely required the signature of two of the local 'authorities', Parish Priest, Local Sargeant or local GP, to condemn a young girl or a young mother or an ill-disciplined boy to one of these settings. Because the institutions were under the control and operation of church bodies, congregations for the most part, objections to such nefarious actions were condemned with the threat of eternal damnation and the immediate sanction of becoming a social outcast.

Ireland has changed remarkably in twenty years, but whilst those who still remember, or those who heard from survivors, still remain, the responsibility exists to give witness to the true story and full context of how badly our Church and State authorities abused those who did not fit the definition of 'normal society' espoused by Dev Valera, Cosgrave and his generation and their successors, right up to the mid-nineties. The populous may have been so relieved that the Civil War had abated that no other abberant behavious mattered, but those politicans who governed in those decades allowed horrendous social abuse.

It is not a pleasant story and it will cause pain in being exposed. It will require acknowlegment by Church, State and society. But none of the three parties can point the finger at others and say "it wasn't our fault". All parties must accept their part in this horror story.

Good post RTB.What it all goes to prove is that denial and omission are the greatest sins and they're not even mentioned in the 12 commandments although false witness might cover it.Lies, damned lies and statistics.The victims of abuse are mere statistics and damned inconvenient ones at that.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall who's the greatest player of them all? It is Drico your majesty.